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Unreal Tournament 2004
Unreal Tournament 2004, also known as UT2K4 and UT2004, is the sixth installment in the ''Unreal'' series and the third installment in the Unreal Tournament series. The game was developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, and was released on March 16, 2004 in North America. __TOC__ Synopsis }} }} Overview UT2004 is basically an extension of the work done in Unreal Tournament 2003, retaining most of the maps, characters and gametypes from that release, tweaking various issues that were brought up, and adding a considerable amount of new content: nearly 50 new maps, vehicular combat, the Assault gametype which had been excluded from UT2003, and the new gametype Onslaught. The character roster also got a significant boost, with the notable addition of Liandri bots led by the former tournament champion Xan, as well as a team of Skaarj warriors. The game sought to remedy some of the complaints with the gameplay in Unreal Tournament 2003. One of the most influential changes to the core gameplay was change in the weapon switch speed. This change prevented players from switching weapons quickly in order to increase their rate of fire. Also, the Sniper Rifle was reinstated, though not as versatile as the rest of the games featuring it. There was also a major change in the netcode, which better accommodates vehicle gametypes and large player counts, at the cost of breaking compatibility with UT2003 and any mods that were designed to use UT2003 netcode. Among significant changes to gameplay mechanics and visual presentation, one of the major additions introduced by UT2004 is the inclusion of vehicles and the Onslaught game type for multiplayer, allowing for large-scale battles. The game features nearly every content from its predecessor, replacing it on the shop shelves. UT2004 boxes sold in the United States include a $10 mail-in rebate requiring that a short form be completed and sent to the publisher along with a copy of the manual cover for UT2003. Versions sold in the United Kingdom had a similar offer, but required sending in the play CD for UT2003 instead. Unreal Tournament 2004 was the first closed source game to support the new x86-64-bit extension, utilizing Linux, as Windows for x86-64 had not been released at the time. According to Ryan "Icculus" Gordon, the Unreal Tournament 2004 installer for Linux is based in the one done for Unreal Tournament 2003. Several middleware engines and technologies are incorporated into UT2004, including: * DivX Video Library * Karma Physics Library * Microsoft Speech SDK * OGG Vorbis Library * Speex * Miles Sound System - MP3 playback support * OpenAL Audio System for Linux and Mac versions * SDL * Pixomatic Software Renderer * LIPsinc Facial Animation Software Development history The game was initially teased months after the release of Unreal Tournament 2003 by Marvin Buckett, CFO of the NVIDIA Corporation, but it was only after the end of the lifecycle of 2003 that rumours began to grow. Around this time, long time publisher Infogrames changed its name to Atari, after acquiring the name. The real announcement of the game came on May 13, 2003, with the game itself being officially introduced in that year's E3 exposition. The game was introduced in the E3 2003 with a demo containing two maps for the new gamemodes and showcasing most of the promised features. Early discussion about the pricing also involved Mark Rein telling the community that Epic Games and Atari are considering some sort of rebate for previous owners of UT2003. Also, when asked for the Mac version, a journalist was told that after the release of the UT2003 Demo for the mac, at the end of that game's lifecycle, everything was now up to speed, and that porting should be straightforward. UT2004 was built with the Unreal Engine 2.5 and the content of its predecessor. It addressed many of its shortcomings, including the amount of content available, which was nearly doubled. Epic Games was the primary developer for the bulk of UT2004, which consisted mainly of building upon the work done for UT2003. Epic collaborated with several other development studios in the creation of UT2004. Lead programmer Steven Polge described the role of each company involved: * Epic Games: Enhancements to the Unreal Tournament 2003 game types, the new UI, Voice over IP and bot voice command support, engine enhancements and optimizations. They also made an improved single player game, and improved community and demo recording support, in addition to 31 new playable characters. A Sniper Rifle similar to the one included in the original Unreal Tournament was added. AI support was incorporated for the Onslaught mode. 31 maps were made by them: one Onslaught map, 16 new Deathmatch maps, 5 new Capture The Flag Maps, 2 new Double Domination maps and 1 new Bombing Run map were added. The Assault gametype design and implementation were also reintroduced from the original Unreal Tournament. * Digital Extremes: 3 new DM maps, 6 new CTF maps, 2 new Bombing Run maps, and 3 new Double Domination maps, 2 new playable characters, the new HUD design; new weapon models for the Assault Rifle, Shock Rifle, and Link Gun. * Psyonix: The Onslaught gametype design and implementation, with 6 new vehicles, 4 new weapons (Grenade Launcher (UT2004), Mine Layer, Anti-Vehicular Rocket Launcher (AVRiL), and the Target Painter), and the Energy Turret. They also created seven Onslaught maps, and collaborated with Streamline Studios on the popular map ONS-Torlan. Finally, they made the new model for the Translocator. * Streamline Studios: The single player introduction movie and ONS-Torlan in collaboration with Psyonix. Streamline later created an Assault map, AS-Confexia, which they released for free. Originally, UT2004 was supposed to be backwards compatible with UT2003. UT2003 players could play on 2004 servers and vice versa. Due to the massive changes present in the 2004 engine (mainly due to the vehicles -some vehicle code was present in 2003 but was cut due to time constraints-, bandwidth reduction and performance increase), compatibility was eventually dropped before release. Also, according to a PlanetUnreal article, the Necris were going to be shipped with the game, but in the end, only two of them were included; and that too, as part of the ECE Bonus Pack. Features that did made it into the retail game are the possibility of using voice speech to order bots around , voice over IP , UnrealTV, the return of the dual Enforcers in the form of dual Assault Rifles , and the UT Classic mutator that didn't made the cut for the final stages of 2003's development cycle. Like in 2003's case, the release date was postponed several times. Initially, the release date aimed for christmas, however it was later postponed for valentine's day (February 14, 2004). The game was eventually released in March 15, 2004. Upon release, UT2004 utilized build 3186 of the Unreal Engine 2. Demo Epic released the demo for UT2004 on February 11th, 2004, for multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux on x86-32 (February 13, 2004) and Linux on x86-64 (February 15, 2004). It used build 3120 of the Unreal Engine 2 and has five maps from the game's library: AS-Convoy, BR-Colossus, CTF-BridgeOfFate, DM-Rankin and ONS-Torlan. On September 24th, 2004, Epic released an updated version of the demo, using the (at the time) latest codebase for UT2004, Version 3334. Besides the obvious inclusion of many bugfixes and adjustments from the retail version, it added some new vehicles from the Editor's Choice Edition, as well as added two more maps to play (CTF-FaceClassic and ONS-Primeval), for a grand total of Seven. Release dates * March 15, 2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC - Linux x86-32/x86-64 and Windows) - Six-CD set * March 15, 2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC - Linux x86-32/x86-64 and Windows) - Single-DVD * March 15, 2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC - Linux x86-32/x86-64 and Windows) - Limited Special Edition - 2-DVD set with Logitech Internet Chat Headset and a series of UnrealEd video tutorials developed by 3DBuzz. * March 31, 2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC - Mac OS X) - single-DVD * April 13, 2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC - Linux x86-32/x86-64 and Windows) - 2 DVD set * September 21, 2004 - Unreal Tournament 2004 Editors Choice Edition - included three new vehicles, four new Onslaught maps, six new characters, and several selected community mods. * September 23, 2004 - Editors Choice Edition material available for free download for owners of the original release of UT2004. * October 1, 2005 - Windows x86-64 downloadable patch. * December 2, 2005 - Mega Bonus Pack released online - including patch to v3369, the Editors Choice Edition material, and several new maps. * November 6, 2006 - released as a portion of the Unreal Anthology collection. * March 17, 2008 - Unreal Deal Pack. * Later 2008 - Unreal Tournament 2004 Editors Choice Edition (GOG.com). Post-release content A map that didn't made the cut for the game but was released for free later was ONS-Icarus, by Bastiaan Frank. It became the first Ownage map for UT2004. Two maps were released as an exclusive pack for Windows XP computers through Gamespot called "XP bonus Maps": Clawfist's ONS-Aridoom and Nathillien's ONS-Ascendancy. The maps were soon redistributed by others without the installer, allowing anyone to use them. The Editor's Choice Edition of the game is a 2-DVD special edition of the game with some bonus content, including four new Onslaught maps, three new Onslaught vehicles, six new characters, and eleven user-created mods. The second disc included the same video tutorials included with the special edition of the initial release. The Editors Choice Edition utilized build 3323, and the Mega Pack utilizes build 3369, the latest patch to UT2004. Soon after the ECE went on sale, the bonus game content (with the exception of the mods, which players could download for free, and the tutorial videos) were made available for download by existing owners of the game. The three new vehicles can be used in stock and XP maps through the Bonus Vehicles mutator. Also included were four new maps using the vehicles. Most of the mods included in the ECE were winners or finalists in Epic's Make Something Unreal Contest. The user created mods included in this release were: The Mega Pack contains the ECE Bonus Pack, patch 3369 and some Assault, Capture the Flag and Deathmatch maps. The maps are special editions of maps originally made by community mappers. The Assault maps were upgraded with intros and announcements by the original female announcer voice, as well as several fixes. Almost every map in the pack comes from the 2004 edition of the Make Something Unreal Contest. In fact, four of the five Assault maps placed between first and fifth place in the contest, while the remaining entry (AS-MZ-HighRise) disn't made the cut for the pack, being replaced by AngelMapper's AS-BP2-SubRosa. Game content Gamemodes UT2004 features every gametype already present in UT2003: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Double Domination, Capture The Flag, Bombing Run, Invasion, Last Man Standing and Mutant, plus four new gametypes: Onslaught, Assault, Vehicle CTF and Instagib CTF. Vehicle CTF has no official maps, though fan-made maps can be added and the gametype will appear. ICTF was introduced later in a patch. The game features almost all of UT2003's maps and then doubles its numbers with new content. 55 new maps are added to the existing 51, with another 15 maps becoming available through free bonus packs. These bring the total number of official maps to 121. CTF and ICTF share the CTF map pool. ONS, AS, BR and DDOM have their own set of maps. The rest of the gametypes use the Deathmatch set of maps. Characters Weapons Unreal Tournament 2004 sports an extensive array of weapons, combining updated classic weapons from Unreal Tournament, newer weapons from UT2003, and all-new weapons. Several weapons were designed specifically for use in vehicle-based gametypes, and typically appear only in those gametypes. Superweapons can be turned off as an option, and so they may or may not appear in-game depending on the server setup. Like every game in the Unreal series, the weapons are distributed in an array of 10 slots. Returning from UT2003 New Items Vehicles One of the most prominent additions to UT2004 is vehicles. They only appear in the Onslaught, Assault and Vehicle CTF game modes. The full set consist of aircraft types and land vehicles. There are also two spacecrafts which only officially feature in a few maps, and different types of gun turrets which players can take control of. Retail ECE Assault Other Teams The selectable characters of UT2004 are divided into seven races: the default six of 2003 (Humans, Anubans, Automatons, Juggernauts, Gen Mo'Kai, Nightmares) and the Skaarj as a seventh playable race. The playable characters are divided into 12 teams: Soundtrack Will Nevins (Sound Design Group, SDG-''), Kevin Riepl (''KR-'') and Starsky Partridge (''Level#) are credited for working on the music in Unreal Tournament 2004. Essential Files Here you can find a list of official and unofficial, yet essential, files for your game. Trivia * UT2003 and UT2004 share most of the content and codebase, though UT2004 contains much more content. * There is a bug where a player cannot have both the Target Painter and the Ion Painter at the same time. * The box art features Skaarj warriors as the highlighted character: Dominator for the standard installer pack and Mekkor for the Editor's Choice Edition or ECE bonus pack. * UT2004 has the second highest weapon count in any Unreal game (17) only below Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. * This game is the final PC release in the UT series, which features the Unreal Engine 2. * There's a hidden loading screen involving Xan Kriegor. In order to enable it, the following change must be made in the GUI2K4.UT2K4ServerLoading section of the User.ini in the System folder: Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen1 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen2 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen2 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen4 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen1 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen2 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen3 Backgrounds=2k4Menus.Loading.loadingscreen4 UT2004 and Windows 7 Firewall Issues You may find while trying to play UT2004 in Windows 7, that you are unable to even get to the server browser because of a message indicating that the Windows Firewall does not have an exception for the game. Even after allowing UT2004 through the firewall, the game will still not work. To fix this, you must add the following to your UT2004.ini: FireWall IgnoreSP2=1 Credits Gallery Unreal Tournament 2004 Vehicles Trailer ut2k4-game-of-year-1.jpg ut2004-unknownmap-wallpaper.jpg ut2004-unknownmap-wallpaper-redteam.jpg External links and references * Unreal Tournament 2004 @ Wikipedia * Unreal Tournament 2004 (Video Game) @ TVTropes See also *Unreal Tournament *Unreal Tournament 2003 *Unreal Tournament 3